Monday, September 26, 2011

This is all we got this week. We're not sure what happened to the first part of his email.

***So i thought I sent the first part of this email, buts its not in my inbox at all, so I'm confused. I'm going to just start where I left off, but if you didn't get the first part, then I guess this part won't make any sense.***

One of the things they asked us is to give them scriptures in the bible that support the Book of Mormon. Well, if you read the bible, there is no verse that definitly says "yea, behold, I will bring forth the Book of Mormon." The Lord doen't work like that. He requires that we have faith to belive, to do, to act. Once we excersise that faith, then we can come to the knowledge that things are true. That is one of the many reasons why prayer is so important. We have to excersise faith to pray. We even have to have the faith that our prayers will be answered. In the introduction and the very last chapter of the Book of Mormon, the reader is told that is they want to know is the Book of Mormon is true, they need to reed, ponder, and pray. Sure, we can try to prove the Book of Mormon to be ture from the bible, but the Knowledge of God is so much greater, and He will only give the truth as answers. I have a testimony of prayer, that God, our Heavenly Father, really does want us to talk with him. I know he will answer our prayers, He will talk back to us. Its amazing.

Monday, September 19, 2011

I set some records this last week. Record #1: I ate 15 chicken wings for dinner. There was a miss comunication, and we thought we were going to teach this less active member a lesson, but they thought they were going to feed the four of us dinner. Well, only two of us went, and we were supposed to eat it all, so we did.

Record #2: We walked past the same place 5 times in one day. Due to many weird and unexplainable cirumstances, we ended up walking back and forth a lot.

I know, so exciting.

What is more exciting is that one investiagator I keep refering to, she who shall not be named, is still being an awesome investigator! Last week, we translated the quit smoking program for her, and she started it the next day! She has so much faith, and it keeps growing! She knew smoking was bad, and she really wants to quite because she really wants to be baptized! Boyah!

We've been working a little bit with this other investigator, who seems to be progressing. In his spare time, he makes Rosaries and braclets. (I have pictures!) To bad we can't wear them And we were given some of them. After a game of onesided phone tag, meaning we called him more a few times, and he never called back, he didn't end up coming to church, but thats ok! He seems genarlly interested from what I can tell. The problem with working with Hispanic people is they all say we can come back. They all like learning more about God, which is awesome, so we just have to figure out who's interested and who isn't. We're working on it. People love to play onesided phone tag with us! Its ok, people have their agency whether they want to accept the Gospel. It also helps us know who is really interested and who isn't.

So the Church has been doing this push and advertising in some areas, and we're one of those areas. The church has received a lot of attention because of it, and has also found that it increases the number of baptisms, so its worth it. Its different for us spanish speakers, but the English members are going to have a oppurtunity to talk to more of their friends about the Gospel becuase so many people will see the commercials and advertisments. The more missionary work the better!

Sorry its a short one again, I have some pictures this time!

Thanks to those who write me!

Your blog author

Elder Clark

Picture of me in the field, and I'm with geese. Yes.

The Rosary and the braclet thing, to bad I can't wear them.

I have pictures of Elder Neri chasing the geese, and also of him gigging in the dirt with a spoon, but I figures you all didn't need to see them. =) We have fun while we work hard.

Monday, September 12, 2011

So yeah, here is another one of my weekly emails that I'm sure fill your days with excitment and wonder.

Probably the most exciting thing that happened this week was we found out what was holding one of our investigators back. This is the same investigator I've mentioned I few times already. We felt we should teach her the Word of Wisdom, and we found out that she smokes, but that she knows its bad and wants to change because she really does want to get baptized. Now that we know that, we can continue! The Church has an swesome program that helps people quit smoking in seven days, and Elder Johnson said he has seen it work many times before. Excitement!

On Wednesday, Elder Johnson and I went on splits with the Zone Leaders. I got to stay in our area, so I was in charge of what we did, which was only a little bit intimidating at first, but it was good. The Zone leader I went with is a Native Speaker, so that was helpful. We didn't have any appointments, so we just knocked doors and talked to everybody we saw outside. It was an awesome day, and we gained quite a few potential investigators.

My understanding of Spanish is improving, and by improving, I mean that I understand about everyword out of 20. No, its really better than that, but sometimes I just sit there with a confused look on my face. Then people try to talk to me in English, and I still don't understand becuase I'm already confused. Sometimes, I don't even understand what english people are saying. One day when we were walking up to a potenial's apartment, this guy like 20 feet away asked us who we were. I said we were Missionaries for Jesus Christ. He then asked if we were non-profit, but I thought he asked if we were Prophets. I said that we weren't Prophets, but that we believe in them. Elder Johnson then quickly stepped in and saved me. I'm glad I can provide you all with stories of my awesome adventures, and give you something to laugh at.

Sorry, this week wasn't as exciting as others, but I beleive I did a good job at writing a lot of words to explain things that were in fact very simple.

For those people who love missionary pictures, sorry. I've been failing at taking a lot of them. Don't worry, eventually, there will be more pictures, and one of them might even have me in it.

That is my entire week written in four 3 paragraphs. Hope you've enjoyed your reading experience. Thanks to those that write me, because I also enjoy hearing about what people are doing. It also feels better because I actually get to know about the lives of the people who get to hear so much about mine.

Wednesday, September 7, 2011

So this has been an exciting week. First off, in the food catagory, I was able to try oysters for the first time, and I've also added to the list of fruits in water mixture: watermelon and someother hispanic fruit that I don't remeber the name, but it tasted way good. Appearantly they're like the shape of peanuts, like a big bean, and brown.

This week has also been an interesting week as far as people go. On Wednesday, we went on exchanges withing our apartment, so I spent a day being a companion to Elder Uffens (its pronounced like muffins without the m.) The first interesting character we met was born in Jerusalem, and he spoke 5 languages. He was the he was agnostic, and talked to us for 15 minutes about why he didn't believe in God. I said he talked to us and not with us becuase he really didn't let us talk. Whenever we tried to bear testimony, he would just bring up some other point and not let us speak. He wasn't bashing us though, and said he respected us for being missionaries. Later that day, at the gas station, we invited a lady to the International Night that we were going to have on Friday. It was really cool because she said she had been thinking about coming to an LDS church. She's had the missionary discussions before, and has a copy of the book of Mormon. She even has a name of one of the Characters in the Book of Mormon! We tried to get her address and phone and stuff, but it didn't quite work out. She was way awesome though, and seems totally prepared to hear the gospel again. We didn't see her at the International Night though. =(

So last week, I talked about one of our ivestigators who opened up more to us and we were able to find out more of her concerns. Well, she keeps amazing us, and she asked us to teach two of her friends! Booyah! She knows the Gospel of Jesus Christ is true, and she allready wants her friends to know about it! We've talked to one of them, and during our first meeting with her, she basically agreed to be baptized! The second friend who we haven't talked yet appearantly has taken the missionary disscussions in California, and moved before she was able to be baptized. I really hope that's the story. There actually might also be a third friend of our investigator, but there is a whole other story thats started unfolding last night about that, and I'll have to wait until next week to share it. =)

So the International night was awesome, and we had a ton of people there. Unfortunantly, I was only able to try one kind of food from the many different countires that had food there. I also missed a lot of performances of the natives dances because we were busy with missionary type stuff. Everybody that came got a name tag that had the flag of the counrty they were from. Now, there was a big plan in place for how we could use this night as a big missionary oppurtunity as well. The whole thing went pretty well.